Anime: Tailenders

Back in 2009, when Redline was released, it got a lot of praise and attention for it’s fantastic animation and artstyle as well as it’s great fast paced action and colorful characters. But there was another similar highly stylized and fast paced racing anime that was released around the same time. That went relatively unnoticed due to the attention that Redline was getting. That anime was Tailenders, released only two months after Redline.

The plot takes place on planet Terulus, long after terraformers were used to try and repair the environment, only for them to go haywire and ravage the surface of the planet for centuries, creating mutations to the wildlife and devastating earthquakes. Because of this, giant cities that could drive around the planets surface were created to house what was left of the population.

One of the biggest past times is a racing competition. The dream of every racer to beat the track records held by Loser King, who disappeared a century ago. Shiro, one of the top racers, is horribly injured by a stampede. A mysterious woman walks in and offers him the chance to race again by replacing his heart with the engine from his own car. Soon, Shiro finds himself trying to win the Planet Redevelopment Race and try to beat the Loser King’s record times.

Even though it’s not much longer than the average episode of a TV series, Tailenders tells a satisfying enough story in it’s run time that i didn’t really mind it’s length. Sure, it’s not going to have a lot of character or story depth, but Tailenders wasn’t trying to have that. The characters are well defined enough within the constraints of the short that all of them are enjoyable despite their simplicity.

The short’s world definitely feels like a world despite simply being a setup for it’s plot. Tailenders wants to tell a simple fun story and it does it pretty well. I wish it was slightly longer so it’s pacing could be a bit better, but it’s a minor issue. I can’t really talk about the plot beyond the initial premise since it’s less than 30 minutes, but it was satisfying for what it is.

The art and animation is top notch. The artstyle is a little more over the top than Redline’s, which helps differentiate it enough from Redline that you won’t mistake them from each other. I could see how it could grate on someone more than Redline’s artstyle, as it seems less refined. But it comes down to personal preference, and i had no problem with it.

Tailenders didn’t have the budget or development time that Redline did, and it doesn’t quite reach the peaks that Redline did, but it does fit a lot into it’s scant 27 minutes long running time. It also didn’t recieve quite the same attention either, which is a shame, because Tailenders is definitely worth a watch, as it’s can be just as fun as Redline.